IV and cultural assimilation

[alice wellintown]

The melting pot, like the Glass Steagall Act, cracked and broke and
has been scattered like so many gnostic points of light streaming from
Neal Young's guitar.
No more Melting, no more Multi-Cultural ism, these terms are out and
reflect a shift in the way things are and the way things are
described; is social or descriptive linguistics, at least as far as
the population of academics goes, the terms are dead metaphor.

The Mosaic or Salad is a more accurate description, but it too is
wrapped in stars and stripes.

In any event, P is commenting on the current state of affairs more
than the history that his readers are not likely to recall or remember
with any degree of certainty or faith. That he historisizes should not
cause readers to project a wiki-novel world from the fragments he has
deliberately left ...unmelted and fractured. P's texts are a
fragmanted and cracked looking glass held up to Nature and not a
looking glass held up to California circa 1970.

On 10/13/09, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
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> ****Bekah is ME and sez:
> ME:   Another thing,  I think Pynchon is going to some lengths to include specific elements of the racial/national diversity which is LA in one large celebration of cultural assimilation.
>
> I also think, from doc's afro thru Tariq, the Asian chicks and others, TRP definitely wanted to indicate a real mixing 'melting pot' that was lost later in America.....
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